FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2025.103538
Lambros Roumbanis
{"title":"On the present-future impact of AI technologies on personnel selection and the exponential increase in meta-algorithmic judgments","authors":"Lambros Roumbanis","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103538","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103538","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The ongoing implementation of new AI technologies in both public and private organizations has already had a great impact on professional judgment and decision-making processes. For many experts working with people’s applications tied to, e.g., welfare services, employment, school admission, parole, and insurance, algorithm-based decision assistance has already changed the way they perform their assessments. Yet we are still in what seems to be the early stages of this socio-technological transformation. Based on interviews with twenty-four expert recruiters, the purpose of the study is to explore their professional views and expectations concerning the present-future impact of AI on personnel selection. The study seeks to shed new light on the exponential increase in meta-algorithmic judgments, a concept that pinpoints the fact that many experts today must handle algorithmic assessments before moving forward in the decision-making process. What do the respondents think has motivated this socio-technological change, and what do they expect will happen to the role of human judgment in the future? The analysis suggests that the seemingly inevitable existence of human biases and the lack of efficiency in traditional recruitment are, according to all respondents, the main reasons why AI should be used, given its promise to improve both fairness and time management. While AI recruitment systems will most likely become increasingly sophisticated, most respondents thought that these systems would nevertheless never be able to fully replace human judgment. However, a handful of respondents deviated from this majority view by instead expecting that AI would take over the whole process in the not-too-distant future.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103538"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2024.103535
Anna Cain
{"title":"Caring for technologies, caring for Country","authors":"Anna Cain","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2024.103535","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2024.103535","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Care is an emerging theoretical tool supporting analysis of socioecological equity impacts as energy systems are transformed to support more sustainable futures. Derived from feminist critiques of rationalist, market-led approaches, energy scholars use care to draw attention to the matters of care that are counted into energy system transitions and the care labour required to realise these transitions. Less attention has been applied to non-Western concepts of care and how they might provide alternative futures through energy. This paper draws on Tronto’s (2013) phases of care framework to investigate how care shapes, flows through and is enabled by renewable energy programs in remote Indigenous communities in Australia. Using data collected through multi-sited project ethnography, this analysis considers how care is defined and built into energy program design and implementation. Interrogating these care logics illustrates the importance of prioritising sociocultural alongside technical forms of care. Understanding energy in this way offers insights into the role of energy in underpinning Indigenous futures, by supporting Indigenous ontological imperatives to exist in and care for Country, as well as insights into what it means to care at scale with energy through sustainability transitions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103535"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2025.103548
Jan Oliver Schwarz , Theresa Constanze Schropp , Bernhard Wach , Fabian Buder
{"title":"Do internal foresight activities add value to decision-making? Insights from an empirical investigation","authors":"Jan Oliver Schwarz , Theresa Constanze Schropp , Bernhard Wach , Fabian Buder","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103548","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103548","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In a large empirical investigation of 400 managers in large U.S. and European corporations, we shed light on the effects of internal strategic foresight activities for decision-making, asking whether and how firms’ internal foresight activities add value to their decision-making. Enabling and supporting strategy conversations is conceptualized here as a central activity of strategic foresight. Our empirical investigation demonstrates that internal foresight activities have a significant and positive effect on strategy conversations within a firm. Against the assumptions of previous research, however, we cannot confirm the positive influence of strategy conversations in general on challenging the status quo in a firm or the overall helpfulness of strategic foresight activities in the context of decision-making. Future research should delve deeper into organizational studies to gain a more nuanced understanding of the processes and factors influencing future-oriented decision-making, as well as identifying key enablers that facilitate these decisions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103548"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2024.103520
Min Hyung Kim , Dorothy Jane Dankel
{"title":"Are we ready to be wrong? Extended peer community for quality science-advice in uncertainty","authors":"Min Hyung Kim , Dorothy Jane Dankel","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2024.103520","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2024.103520","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper delves into the challenges of achieving inclusion within science-advice institutions, particularly focusing on the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). It explores the normative and practical implications of broadening the epistemic space to incorporate diverse ways of knowing in uncertain contexts. Traditional science-advice often relies on strict quantification and institutionalized expertise, limiting the recognition of alternative perspectives. The study proposes an alternative view rooted in post-normal science, advocating for the adoption of an extended peer community model. Despite ICES's efforts to enhance stakeholder engagement through its Stakeholder Engagement Strategy, gaps remain in effectively valuing epistemic diversity. By analyzing a historical case involving the revision of fishing quotas for Northeast Atlantic mackerel, the paper illustrates the limitations of strict quantification in addressing complex and uncertain problems. It recommends a participatory approach informed by post-normal science principles and incorporates the concept of “epistemic injustice” in Miranda Fricker’s work (Fricker, 2003, 2007) to the discussion to underscore the ethical imperative of inclusive decision-making. Ultimately, the paper advocates for post-normal science approaches to better address contemporary challenges in science-advice institutions when the problem is deeply uncertain and complex.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103520"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2025.103549
Álvaro Aranda-Muñoz , Nina Bozic Yams , Lisa Carlgren
{"title":"Co-experiential futuring: Where speculative design and arts meet futures studies","authors":"Álvaro Aranda-Muñoz , Nina Bozic Yams , Lisa Carlgren","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103549","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103549","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the face of continuous transformations in organisations, technological advancements directly impact the practice of professionals who need to (re)imagine and (re)shape their roles, workflows, and contexts. To navigate these uncertainties and collaboratively explore alternative futures, we present a collaborative method to stage hybrid design futures in organisational settings. We tested the method in a five-workshop journey in a Swedish public academy for competence development that trains healthcare practitioners such as doctors, midwives, nurses and dentists, among others. The findings and outcomes from workshops are presented in the light of a combined analytical framework of hybrid design futures. The collaborative method engaged participants to be active creators during workshops by creating physical models representing their future scenarios, writing speculative stories about their future roles, enacting ideas from their speculative fictions, and making low-fidelity prototypes of potential technological applications in their future workplace. The results suggest that the collaborative method helped participants develop their sense of agency to change and shape their futures within the organisation. The findings indicate that participants became more aware of technological roles, their capacity to own their futures, and the need to collaborate with other departments within the organisation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103549"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2024.103534
Anke Schwittay
{"title":"Prefigurative pedagogies: Learning to build alternative futures in student housing co-operatives","authors":"Anke Schwittay","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2024.103534","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2024.103534","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How and where can young people learn to imagine and create alternative futures? In this article, I argue that student housing co-operatives in the UK are sites of prefigurative pedagogies that enable students to experiment with new ways of dwelling, being and making in the world. Through collective living and learning, student housing co-operators contribute to building urban commons as near counter-futures to financialized student housing and marketized Higher Education. Their daily practices of homemaking constitute an example of students’ participation in experiential futuring that nurtures horizontal democracy, mutual care and collective labor as components of potential post-capitalist futures. Based on long-term qualitative research with co-operatives in Edinburgh and Brighton, I analyze the pedagogical formation of co-operative subjectivities, values and relationships that student housing co-operatives enable and explore spatial autonomies, differentiated labor divisions and rent policies as concrete practices through which their residents prefigure alternative futures.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103534"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2025.103543
Fanqi Zeng , Grant Blank , Ralph Schroeder
{"title":"Using AI to model future societal instability","authors":"Fanqi Zeng , Grant Blank , Ralph Schroeder","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103543","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103543","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper develops a model that aims to pinpoint the future structural constraints facing a number of countries and the instability that may result from these constraints. The model uses existing datasets and extrapolates major patterns several decades into the future based on past patterns. Contrary to predictions of looming crisis in certain states by Turchin and others, the argument is that a more likely scenario is an increasing inability to cope with the combination of fiscal constraints that limit state revenue in the face of rising social spending. The paper is based on a four-way comparison between the United States, Sweden, India and China. These four cases provide a wide range of possibilities for comparative-historical analysis and forecasting. In the most likely scenario, a shrinking working-age population leads to a spending crisis in China and to social tensions in other countries. The paper makes three contributions: the first is to offer an alternative to Turchin’s prediction of political crisis in the US and beyond. The second is to extend predictions for societal instability beyond rich Western countries. The third is to demonstrate how our model can be compared with Turchin’s using AI tools.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103543"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Evaluation criteria for R&D adopting “imaginary future generations” — A deliberation experiment in an engineering company","authors":"Keishiro Hara , Yukari Fuchigami , Yutaka Nomaguchi , Tetsusei Kurashiki , Masahiro Eguchi","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103542","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103542","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate how the adoption of “imaginary future generations (IFGs),” a mechanism for activating futurabilty of people, influences the decision criteria and evaluation framework of a corporate R&D strategy. We conducted a debate experiment involving the employees of a water engineering company, in which the participants depicted the future state of society and the company’s business in the year 2050 and examined an R&D strategy for specific technologies. Text mining of the discussion content and results of a questionnaire survey administered to participants showed that compared to viewing the future from the perspective of current generations, an IFGs’ perspective evidently changed 1) the perception of the future state of society and business; and 2) the most important indicators used to examine an R&D strategy, and their relative weights. When the perspective of IFGs was adopted, indicators associated with the categories of “business & economy,” “differentiation with & relationships with other companies,” and “company policy and vision” were rated as less important to the R&D strategy, while the importance of the categories “technology development,” “environmental problems,” and “social issues & needs” increased. This study demonstrates that the adoption of the viewpoint of “futurability” can change the framework of technology evaluations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103542"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2025.103541
Neil Selwyn , Fareed Kaviani , Yolande Strengers , Kari Dahlgren , Bronwyn Cumbo , Markus Wagner
{"title":"“We’re already experts in school, right?”: Supporting students’ construction of future school scenarios","authors":"Neil Selwyn , Fareed Kaviani , Yolande Strengers , Kari Dahlgren , Bronwyn Cumbo , Markus Wagner","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103541","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103541","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent interest in education futures amongst policymakers and industry has been accompanied by acknowledgement of the need to better include the voices and views of diverse groups in the production of narratives around what future forms of schooling might look like. This paper explores the issues implicit in engaging school students in anticipating future forms of schooling. Drawing on empirical research with secondary school students (aged 12–14 years), the paper reflects on the strengths and limitations of engaging students in such futuring work. Rather than producing liberatory scenarios of radically different forms of education, the paper reflects on how students’ visions of the future school tended to anticipate the continued core structures of schooling, albeit shaped by changes in the mundane, everyday practices of education related to values of care, security and relationality. The paper also highlights the ways in which students’ uses of digital presentation tools, online content and generative AI tended to limit and flatten-out more imaginative and idiosyncratic futures thinking and instead lead to the replication of popular ‘future school’ tropes. It is concluded that student-produced ‘future school’ scenarios perhaps have most value as: (i) a means of working through what qualities, and (ii) characteristics of the existing school model might be usefully amplified, and as a basis for supporting students to work out forms of action that they might meaningfully engage in developing these aspects of their current school experiences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103541"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FuturesPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2025.103539
Lisa A. Pace , Carmen Bruno , Jan Oliver Schwarz
{"title":"Personas in scenario building: Integrating human-centred design methods in foresight","authors":"Lisa A. Pace , Carmen Bruno , Jan Oliver Schwarz","doi":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103539","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.futures.2025.103539","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper contributes to integrating human-centred design approaches in foresight. We emphasize design thinking as an approach that incorporates user-centred concepts and artefacts, enabling the creation and visualization of potential futures and mediating the exploration of new perspectives and areas of intervention for innovation. However, there is limited discussion in the foresight literature on the meaningful application of design approaches. We focus on the persona method and its roles and applications in scenario building. To be meaningful in scenario building, personas need to appropriately integrate users’ future needs, expectations and behaviours that shape and in turn are shaped by contexts that are yet to be realised. Based on an analysis of published case studies, the paper underscores the role of personas in fostering creative imagination, enhancing scenario engagement, and prospective sensemaking beyond their application as a storytelling vehicle in scenarios. We link persona characteristics and design to their roles in scenario building, allowing design and foresight practitioners the flexibility to tailor the persona approach to different contexts and critically assess the underlying limitations. From this, we provide recommendations for incorporating personas in scenario building and conclude with suggestions for future research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48239,"journal":{"name":"Futures","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 103539"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}